The oldest fossils known to date have been discovered in 3.7 billion-year-old rocks in Greenland by an Australian-led team of researchers.

The discovery of the fossilised bacterial communities, known as stromatolites, could be the first clear biological evidence of the earliest known life on Earth, according to a paper published today in Nature.

Before this find, the earliest accepted evidence for life were 3.48 billion-year-old fossil stromatolites from the Pilbara region in Western Australia

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-01/worlds-oldest-fossils-in-3.7-billion-year-old-rocks-in-greenland/7802336

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-01/stromatolite.jpg/7804438

The image (no scale bar!) is not entirely convincing.

Michael V said:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-01/stromatolite.jpg/7804438

The image (no scale bar!) is not entirely convincing.

To my eyes , I should have added.

They got it published in Nature , so the peer-review process is very, very likely to be much more robust than my opinion based on a media-published image.

Michael V said:

Michael V said:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-01/stromatolite.jpg/7804438

The image (no scale bar!) is not entirely convincing.

To my eyes , I should have added.

They got it published in Nature , so the peer-review process is very, very likely to be much more robust than my opinion based on a media-published image.

I still woulda believed ya MV! :-)

monkey skipper said:

Michael V said:

Michael V said:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-01/stromatolite.jpg/7804438

The image (no scale bar!) is not entirely convincing.

To my eyes , I should have added.

They got it published in Nature , so the peer-review process is very, very likely to be much more robust than my opinion based on a media-published image.

I still woulda believed ya MV! :-)

Thanks for the vote of confidence, ms.

:)

Good Evening.

Sorry… wrong thread.

Michael V said:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-01/stromatolite.jpg/7804438

The image (no scale bar!) is not entirely convincing.

The pilbara stromatolites are much more convincing. Check Google image search.

Michael V said:

Michael V said:

http://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-09-01/stromatolite.jpg/7804438

The image (no scale bar!) is not entirely convincing.

To my eyes , I should have added.

They got it published in Nature , so the peer-review process is very, very likely to be much more robust than my opinion based on a media-published image.

Yes, but I take it you haven’t read the article in Nature. No? Well, this is a quote.

“Part of the problem with studying ancient stromatolites is that layered structures can form through processes that have nothing to do with life. Minerals precipitating out on the seafloor can leave layers, like rings on a bathtub, that look like stromatolites but aren’t. At most, these structures should be classified as pseudostromatolites, the evidence is not convincing for such an important claim. We would like to see whether the proposed stromatolites have small amounts of organic matter in or near them. Comparing different types of carbon in the rock could help to reveal whether the structures are biological or not. However, the Greenland rocks should help astrobiologists as they prepare for the first ever samples to be returned from Mars, from a NASA mission slated to launch in 2020. The newly reported stromatolites may serve as a test case for scientists to argue about what constitutes convincing evidence of past life. If we found something like this on Mars would we wouldn’t stick a flag in it and call it life.”

ie. Even the experts reporting in Nature agree with you.

http://www.nature.com/news/claims-of-earth-s-oldest-fossils-tantalize-researchers-1.20506

and more …

“But the discovery involves some of the most physically tortured rocks on Earth, which have been squeezed and heated over billions of years as crustal plates shifted. The pressure and heat recrystallizes the rocks, erasing much of the fine-scale detail that researchers normally use to identify fossilized stromatolites — so the work is already triggering heated debate. “I’ve got 14 queries and problems that need addressing before I’ll believe it,” says Roger Buick, a geobiologist at the University of Washington in Seattle.